The former England captain on Australia’s ‘freak’ run machine, the psychological battles all cricketers face and why less could be more for the future of Test cricket“As cricketers we fail all the time,” Alastair Cook says as he remembers how, exactly a year ago, on 10 September 2018, his final Test match innings unfolded like a beautiful fairytale. “You score a hundred every now and again but you get out between 0 and 20 far more often. If you get 50, you feel bad because you should have got a hundred. Even if you get a hundred, you feel you should have got 150. So you’re always failing.”

Cook had worried about bagging a pair in his last Test but he made 71 in the first innings. Then, driven by the determination which means only Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid scored more runs than he did in his 161 Tests, Cook hit a magical 147 in the second innings.